


The Lifer's Brief

by missmollyetc



Series: Murphy's Crew [5]
Category: Tour of Duty (1987)
Genre: Other, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-12
Updated: 2010-02-12
Packaged: 2017-10-07 04:47:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/61550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missmollyetc/pseuds/missmollyetc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><b>Murphy's Laws of Combat # 54</b></p><p><i>"Military Intelligence is a contradiction in terms."</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lifer's Brief

No one had ever sat Zeke down and told him flat out what it meant to be a lifer. That would have defeated the object. If you knew, you'd figured it out for yourself. If you had to be told, the knowing did no one any good.

The military, no matter what the officers might believe, was run on that basic principle. Run by people like Zeke, people who'd seen it all, heard it all, and knew it all, deep in their bones. As easy as breathing; instinct better than any book learning, better than any damn chess game.

When you started to think about it--when you read the reports, and looked at the statistics--that's when you started to get into trouble. Weren't nobody's fault, but the boys in Intelligence were never lifers. Hell, some of them hadn't even seen a battle before.

Any lifer could tell you that the first thing that flew out the window in war was Intelligence. The belief that plans--that anything, really--would go the way they were supposed to. A war was chaos, it was the unexpected becoming routine, the surreal becoming normal. You didn't get to keep the plans so there was no point in making them.

Only you couldn't tell that to the _boys_ down in Intelligence. They wouldn't be told anything that didn't come out of some book, and this kind of knowledge, the kind that belonged to Zeke, came from living in mud dyed red, from a buddy with the DTs shivering next to you in a lice-infested rack with RPGs pounding over your head. It didn't come from OCS, or West Point, and most of the people who learned it ended up dead as doornails a minute later.

That was where the lifers came in, the survivors. Zeke was the buffer, the wall between the officers' faults and the grunts' paranoia. Lifers lived in no man's land, they were the border guards. Grunts with their officers' ear, if they were lucky.

So far, Zeke hadn't been lucky. Two of the boys down, and the LT radioing back to base for more orders like HQ had a better clue what to do than the people who were actually there. He risked a quick look out from behind his position and saw Malcolm, his hand still clutching the M-60 and half his face blown off.

It occurred to Zeke that someone once told him that the French eat brains.

He shook his head and focused on the LT. The man was shaking like a leaf, next to Andy the RTO. Andy looked over at Zeke, his eyes big in a pale face. Andy was curled around his stomach, blood pouring out from a wound in his gut.

"Medic!" Zeke shouted.

He saw Doc Matsuda inching his way towards Andy, his bag in one hand and .9 mm in the other.

They were pinned, there was no way out of it. Snipers on two sides and a wall of bullets in the front.

He saw Taylor over by a tree, trading fire with a bush that probably held at least three VC.

The dirt exploded in front of his face and he ducked down, one hand gripping his helmet.

"LT! Sir, we've got to re-group back at Ladybird!" he shouted into the air.

"HQ says we hold!" LT shouted back. "Dammit! These guys aren't supposed to be here!"

Zeke fired off a round in the general direction of the enemy.

"Tell them that!" shouted Taylor.

"That's enough, Taylor!" Zeke shouted.

Andy groaned. Someone else--Thompson, Zeke thought--screamed.

A lifer could only do so much once the shit actually hit the fan. A border once crossed is pretty damn hard to fix. Intelligence, the kind that counted, realized that, in the end, a lifer was always alone.

A heavy volley of fire came boiling out of the bush trained on their position. Zeke scuttled down as far as he could and tugged his helmet over his eyes. He heard the sound of metal and electronics being shot to shit and, in a sudden lull, looked up to see Andy and the LT twitching the way bodies did before they knew they were dead.

Zeke leaned on one elbow and raised his voice, "Fall back! Fall back!"

**Author's Note:**

> The characters of Tour of Duty do not belong to me. No profit is being made from this story.


End file.
